Senator Uba Ahmed Another great one is gone

I had just returned from a long trip to the US and soon as I arrived, my friend Malam Mohamed Lawal asked me to go with him to Jos for a meeting of the Northern Elders Forum. Lawal was the forum’s secretary and very close to its leader, Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene. Though I was a working journalist, Malam Lawal had me embedded in the Northern leaders’ caucuses so I could see what was going on.

We arrived in Jos late in the afternoon and went to the house of Chief Jack Tilley-Gyado. I was seeing Tilley-Gyado for the first time, but I remembered an old story in DRUM magazine in the 1970s which described him [or was it his father?] as one of the richest men in Nigeria alongside the late Chief Henry Fajemirokun.

There wasn’t much of a meeting taking place at the house that evening. Abdurrahman Okene sat in the sitting room while Tilley-Gyado and Senator Uba Ahmed were having an extremely animated discussion on the verandah. Whatever it was that Jack was saying, it greatly excited Uba Ahmed, who every now and then would jump, laugh heartily and embrace Tilley-Gyado. This went on for nearly 30 minutes before we left the house.

That first direct impression of Uba Ahmed therefore was that he was a very excitable man. This was not the impression of him we gleaned from the newspapers, radio and television in the Second Republic, when he came to great prominence as an NPN senator from old Bauchi State. That time he across as serious, dynamic, frowning and extremely partisan.

Even as primary school pupils in the 1970s, we knew Uba Ahmed from Ahmadu Doka’s praise song, “Alhaji Uba Ahmed, Turakin Tangale Waja!” He was an old trade unionist. In the early 1970s, one of the best known trade union figures in the North was Alhaji Yunusa Kaltungo. Uba Ahmed, who hailed from the same area of present day Gombe State, was the secretary of the Northern Workers’ Association in the First Republic.

Uba Ahmed was one of the most effective senators of the Second Republic who took strong positions on every issue. He was fearless, sharp tongued and very partisan; he was ever willing to take on UPN leaders or anyone else who crossed NPN’s bulldozing path.

Early in NPN’s life in late 1978, Uba Ahmed’s fellow Bauchi man Dr. Ibrahim Tahir had tried but failed to become the national secretary. Malam Adamu Ciroma, who contested for NPN’s presidential ticket and finished third in the first ballot behind Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, was appointed National Secretary for a year. When NPN took over the Federal Government in October 1979, Ciroma became Minister of Industries and NPN’s highly effective National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Sulaiman Takuma was appointed the national secretary.

Three years later, when the post was up for re-election, Dr. Tahir did not seek it. Chief M.K.O. Abiola challenged Chief Adisa Akinloye for the chairmanship while Senator Uba Ahmed took up the gauntlet and challenged Takuma. It was well known that both Shagari and Akinloye backed Takuma. Yet, when the votes were counted at the NPN convention, Uba Ahmed defeated Takuma after mounting a very effective campaign. At least in that respect NPN was much more democratic internally than PDP is today.

Uba Ahmed went on to become a very aggressive national secretary ahead of the 1983 elections. The NPN chiefs had parceled out the country among themselves for election coordination and they went on to unleash a scorched earth policy to snatch away some key opposition states. Uba Ahmed was in charge of the UPN-dominated West. I saw a recent interview with him in which he discussed NPN’s “win” of Ondo State in 1983. The affair led to much bloodshed and the Supreme Court eventually overturned Akin Omoboriowo’s election in favour of the incumbent, Governor Michael Ajasin. It was also the occasion on which the Chief Justice of Nigeria, George Sowemimo, said that some powerful forces were trying to influence the court’s ruling. I am not aware that Sowemimo ever revealed who those men were, but many NPN chieftains were mentioned as suspects.

Nearly 30 years after those events, Uba Ahmed still showed a very deep knowledge of the Southwestern political terrain in his recent interview and was effortlessly citing the names of key people and places. When the Second Republic was overthrown in December 1983, Uba Ahmed made headline news with his sensational escape from the country.

Anyway, I had my first real meeting with Uba Ahmed in late 1994. I was deputy editor of The Sentinel and I went with my editor, Malam Adamu Adamu to interview him. We found him at the Ministers’ Hill in Abuja, at the house of then Commerce Minister and former NPN Governor of Rivers State Chief Melford Okilo. He appeared to be living there; the old NPN network was still very much intact.

The interview was notable for not saying much. The papers were already speculating that Abacha was about to reshuffle his cabinet and would appoint Uba Ahmed a minister. This came to pass three months later and he was made Minister of Labour. It was to be a very controversial tenure. Abacha had banned NLC, NUPENG and PENGASSAN the previous year when they struck in favour of June 12. Although early elections were promised, Uba Ahmed began to stall and under his watch, Abacha issued several draconian degrees to further emasculate Big Labour.

One decree of that era that gave us a tough time was the one that banned full time trade unionists from contesting for the NLC presidency. The two leading contenders, Paschal Bafyau and Adams Oshiomhole, were General Secretaries respectively of Railway Workers Union and Textile Workers Union. When I went to work at New Nigerian in late 1995, I found that both the MD Prof. Abubakar Rasheed and the editor Malam Yakubu Aliyu were highly supportive of Oshiomhole’s bid to lead labour. I quickly teamed up with them, which meant we were up against Uba Ahmed.

In mid 1996 when I spent a month in Geneva attending meetings of the UN Human Rights Commission, I was hosted by the Labour Attache at the Nigerian Mission in Geneva, Malam Abdullahi. On several nights, I overheard my host having long phone calls with Uba Ahmed. At one point, he told the minister that I was with him in Geneva and he suggested that I was supportive of the minister’s efforts. Uba Ahmed initially agreed and said I was his friend. But after dropping the phone, he called back and told the attaché, “Be careful with that Jega! He is my friend but be careful with him! We cannot trust any journalist!”

The last time I spoke to Uba Ahmed was in late 2010 when he phoned me from Jos to discuss the terrible security situation in the city. As usual, he had very strong opinions about everything and he spoke for so long that my ears ached. I promised to arrange for him to be interviewed in Jos, which was eventually done.  With his passing at a German hospital this week at the age of 76, this country has lost one of its most effective and controversial politicians. May his soul rest in peace.